Written by: Paul HogendoornOriginally posted to www.tpi-3.ca Sometimes I feel sorry for sales people. They get so little love. They are often underappreciated and unsupported, especially considering the importance of their jobs. They are held more accountable to...
Finding Easy Sales – Top Tips
Written By Paul Hogendoorn Most manufacturing companies I know have only a handful of customers, and the sales process is a matter of keeping your customers happy and winning bids that come their way by offering the most competitive proposal. The sales effort, in most...
APEX Alberta Innovators to Watch – featuring Bruce Ennis, MEE Cluster’s Process Improvement Consultant
The original article appeared June 12th in News & Events Section on the Apex Alberta website. To read the original article, click here. Lean Six Sigma focuses on inefficient processes that cost business owners time, money, customer satisfaction, and employee...
Measuring Time is Critical to Making Money
Written by: Paul Hogendoorn, MEE Cluster Digital Transformation Specialist Most of us have heard the term “time is money” used mostly by people that sell their services based on time. In manufacturing, time really is money, so to improve as a company, its very...
Four Areas to Adopt Digital Technologies
Written by: Paul Hogendoorn, MEE Cluster Digital Transformation Specialist There are many conversations today about “digital transformation” and adopting digital technologies in your manufacturing operation. There’s also a lot of confusion, uncertainty, hesitancy, and...
Better Planning and Preparation is the First Step to Productivity Improvement
Written by: Paul Hogendoorn, MEE Cluster Digital Transformation Consultant How can technology help address the labour shortage issue, or improve your company’s productivity? It can in many ways, but the first answer I offer to those two questions is often not the...
The Difference Between Product and Project Manufacturing
Written by: Paul Hogendoorn, MEE Cluster Digital Transformation Consultant I’ve been working with Western Canadian manufacturers through the MEE Cluster for just under a year now, and most of the manufacturers I’ve engaged with are ‘project based’ manufacturers, and...
Everything you wanted to know about ERP and MES but was afraid to ask
Written by: Paul Hogendoorn, MEE Cluster Digital Transformation Consultant Many manufacturers are overwhelmed by new three and four-letter acronyms that describe things they are said to need to be adopting into their companies to have any chance of surviving in the...
How can Workflow Automation help SME Manufacturers with the labor crunch?
Written in Collaboration between Ted Duffield (Lightship Works) and Paul Hogendoorn (MEE Cluster Digital Transformation Expert) How can Workflow Automation help SME Manufacturers with the labor crunch? We often get asked how Workflow Automation can help manufacturing...
Manufacturing 4.0 academy – Blog Post #1: Tips for getting started with “digitization”
Written by Paul Hogendoorn, MEE Cluster Digital Transformation Consultant The first thing to understand about “digitization” and information technology is they are not silver bullet solutions that can be applied to correct process problems, be they manufacturing,...